California Killers by Jon Sharpe

Author:Jon Sharpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

15

“Not a sound,” the voice warned, “or I’ll send you to hell here and now.”

Fargo was furious, both at his blunder and the man who had taken him captive as slick as could be. He recognized the voice. Controlling his temper, he growled, “What the hell is this, Vorn?”

Hercules Vorn had a wicked laugh. “Here’s how it will be. I’m taking you somewhere. Give me guff and I’ll kill you instead.”

Fargo tested the ropes around his arms. There was only one loop but it was tight as hell.

“I saw that,” Vorn said. “I reckon I need to make myself clearer.”

A boot caught Fargo in the gut. Excruciating pain exploded, doubling him over, and he thought for a few seconds that he’d black out. Gasping and sputtering, he felt spittle dribble over his lower lip. “You son of a bitch,” he rasped.

“You aren’t much for brains, are you?”

Fargo bit off an insult pertaining to Vorn’s mother.

“It’s real simple,” Vorn said. “Behave and you live. Don’t and you die. If you’re hankering to end it sooner, I will gladly oblige.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.” Vorn must have bent down because his breath fanned the burlap bag. “Something else for you to think about. I shoot you here and now and that nice Mrs. Arden might come running out and I’ll have to shoot her, too. And after she’s been so kind, taking you in, and all.”

Fargo bit off another insult.

“Nothing to say?” Vorn taunted.

A hand the size of a ham gripped Fargo by the leg and he was dragged, bumping and bouncing, a good fifty or sixty feet. The hand rose to his arm, Vorn’s other hand wrapped around his other arm, and he was effortlessly lifted and swung up and over a horse, belly down. It didn’t hurt as much as being kicked but it still made him grimace and grit his teeth.

A saddle creaked and Vorn made a clucking sound and they were under way.

The burlap clung to Fargo mouth. He blew against it a few times and got dust into his mouth and coughed.

Out of the blue Vorn said, “You shouldn’t ought to have stood up to me in the saloon. I might have let you leave in peace if you hadn’t.”

“You have no say in what I do,” Fargo said.

“Mister, it’s me you have to thank for that head wound even though I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”

“You’re making no sense,” Fargo said when his giant captor didn’t go on.

“I am to me,” Vorn said.

“If you know who shot me, give me a name.”

“Can’t,” Vorn said. “I know who but I can’t say which since I didn’t see it.”

“You’re talking in circles,” Fargo muttered.

“How about this for plain?” Vorn said. “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you’d swung a little east or west, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“You tried to shoot me in the barn and later out at the Hanks ranch. Why should I believe you’re not the one who creased my skull?”

“If I was, I’d admit it.

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